Research Computing in the College of Engineering

Information for new research labs

Below is information to help new research labs get set up with computing resources.

Network and phone service

The Network Systems Engineering Group ( ithelp@bu.edu ) maintains wired and wireless network access. See the instructions at http://www.bu.edu/tech/accounts/wireless/ to use the wireless access points. There are also wired ethernet quads (panels containing 4 ports each) in the walls of your lab. Normally, these quads have one active network port, but you can activate more by emailing ithelp@bu.edu and providing them with the number written on the quad, and the orientation (lower left, for example) of the port you wish to activate. Please check all of the ports in your lab to see if some are already active before emailing to activate new ones, because there is normally a fee for new activations. To activate a port in your quad for telephone service, please see http://www.bu.edu/tech/comm/phone/

Please send an email to enghelp@bu.edu for help installing any of this software. Particularly, we can do Windows OS installations and reinstallations quickly and easily over the network.

File storage space

a) If you don't already have one, apply for an AD account by going to http://www.bu.edu/computing/accounts/ad/engv and if you get an error message about not being in "the database", email us at enghelp@bu.edu and we will manually pre-approve your request so that the registration will go through the next time you try it. Also, tell us when some good times are for someone from our office to visit you to join the Windows computers in your lab to the college's AD domain.

b) Then let us know the name of your lab or center, and we can make a fileshare for it on the Network Appliance fileserver maintained by the College. It will be at the location \\ad\eng\research\eng_research_yourlabname (or /ad/eng/research/eng_research_yourlabname under Linux) Follow the instructions at http://collaborate.bu.edu/engit/MountingENGNAS to get to your own home directory or your lab directory.

c) To add and remove other people from your lab directory (as well as to give them administrative permissions to computers in your lab), we will create a couple of "security groups" which we will add your lab users to. Send us a list of the AD/Kerberos login names of whoever is should be in the "admins" group as well as whoever should be in the "users" group.

e) You can also change the membership of these groups, but you will need a separate login account called "loginname-adm" to do so. If you don't anticipate modifying groups often, you can ignore steps e through g. If you do, please read on. Once you tell us your labname, we will apply for this account for you and set it to have control of only your lab group. You will receive an email instructing you on how to log into the account with a temporary password. When you first log in, the account will immediately have you change the password. Please do this as soon as you receive the email -- if you do not do this within 24 hours of receiving the email, the temporary password will expire and we will have to have it re-set for you.

f) Once you have the "loginname-adm" account, install the Administrative Tools on your own Windows computer, from \\ad\eng\support\software\windows\i386\microsoft\AdminPAK

High-performance computing resources

The ENG-Grid is a flexible HPC resource that allows you to use your regular AD account and filespace, and to join your own Linux machines to the grid for private queues and highest-priority queue control if you wish. Follow the instructions at http://collaborate.bu.edu/engit/Grid/GridInstructions . You can install any software you want into your own /mnt/nokrb/loginname directory, or we can give you an /ad/eng/support/software directory to put it into for more widespread access by your whole lab.

Additional cluster resources are also available from University IS&T. See http://scv.bu.edu